Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
October 22
A Second Chance
“I came to give life—life in all its fullness.”
John 10:10 (NCV)
Not many second chances exist in the world today. Just ask the kid who didn’t make the little league team or the fellow who got the pink slip or the mother of three who got dumped for a “pretty little thing.”
Not many second chances. Nowadays it’s more like, “It’s now or never.” “Around here we don’t tolerate incompetence.” “Gotta get tough to get along.” “Not much room at the top.” “Three strikes and you’re out.” “It’s a dog-eat-dog world!”
Jesus…would say. “Then don’t live with the dogs.” That makes sense doesn’t it? Why let a bunch of other failures tell you how much of a failure you are?…
It’s not every day that you find someone who will give you a second chance—much less someone who will give you a second chance every day. But in Jesus, you find both.
From: No Wonder They Call Him the Savior
Copyright (W Publishing Group, 2003)
Max Lucado
Numbers 13
Exploring Canaan
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders."
3 So at the LORD's command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. All of them were leaders of the Israelites. 4 These are their names:
from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur;
5 from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori;
6 from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh;
7 from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph;
8 from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun;
9 from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu;
10 from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi;
11 from the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi son of Susi;
12 from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli;
13 from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael;
14 from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi;
15 from the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Maki.
16 These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.)
17 When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, "Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? 20 How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land." (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)
21 So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Lebo [h] Hamath. 22 They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, [i] they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there. 25 At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.
Report on the Exploration
26 They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan."
30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it."
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Psalm 119:33-40 (New International Version)
h He
33 Teach me, O LORD, to follow your decrees;
then I will keep them to the end.
34 Give me understanding, and I will keep your law
and obey it with all my heart.
35 Direct me in the path of your commands,
for there I find delight.
36 Turn my heart toward your statutes
and not toward selfish gain.
37 Turn my eyes away from worthless things;
preserve my life according to your word. [a]
38 Fulfill your promise to your servant,
so that you may be feared.
39 Take away the disgrace I dread,
for your laws are good.
40 How I long for your precepts!
Preserve my life in your righteousness.
October 22, 2009
Failing Memory
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READ: Psalm 119:33-40
Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way. —Psalm 119:37
A New York Times article linked the increase of computer storage with the decrease of data in the human mind. Our electronic aids now remember phone numbers, driving directions, and other information we used to learn by repeated use. In schools, memorization and oral recitation are disappearing from the curriculum. We have become, according to the Times, “products of a culture that does not enforce the development of memory skills.”
Yet never have we as followers of Christ been in greater need of hiding God’s Word in our hearts (Ps. 119:9-11). Scripture memory is more than a helpful mental exercise. The goal is to saturate our minds with God’s truth so that our lives will conform to His ways. The psalmist wrote: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. . . . Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way” (Ps. 119:33,37).
Why not begin committing Scripture to memory? Daily consistency and review are keys to success. And just like physical exercise, this spiritual discipline is enhanced when done with a small group or with a friend.
Let’s not forget to remember and follow the life-giving wisdom of God’s Word. — David C. McCasland
God’s Word will change your life
If you will do your part
To read, to study, and obey,
And hide it in your heart. —Sper
Let the Bible fill your mind, rule your heart, and guide your life.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 22, 2009
The Witness of the Spirit
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READ:
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit . . . —Romans 8:16
We are in danger of getting into a bargaining spirit with God when we come to Him— we want the witness of the Spirit before we have done what God tells us to do.
Why doesn’t God reveal Himself to you? He cannot. It is not that He will not, but He cannot, because you are in the way as long as you won’t abandon yourself to Him in total surrender. Yet once you do, immediately God witnesses to Himself— He cannot witness to you, but He instantly witnesses to His own nature in you. If you received the witness of the Spirit before the reality and truth that comes from obedience, it would simply result in sentimental emotion. But when you act on the basis of redemption, and stop the disrespectfulness of debating with God, He immediately gives His witness. As soon as you abandon your own reasoning and arguing, God witnesses to what He has done, and you are amazed at your total disrespect in having kept Him waiting. If you are debating as to whether or not God can deliver from sin, then either let Him do it or tell Him that He cannot. Do not quote this or that person to Him. Simply obey Matthew 11:28 , "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden . . . ." Come, if you are weary, and ask, if you know you are evil (see Luke 11:9-13 ).
The Spirit of God witnesses to the redemption of our Lord, and to nothing else. He cannot witness to our reason. We are inclined to mistake the simplicity that comes from our natural commonsense decisions for the witness of the Spirit, but the Spirit witnesses only to His own nature, and to the work of redemption, never to our reason. If we are trying to make Him witness to our reason, it is no wonder that we are in darkness and uncertainty. Throw it all overboard, trust in Him, and He will give you the witness of the Spirit.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
One "Unloseable" Hope - #5944
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The train left Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at 7:30 in the morning, headed for a popular resort area along the Indian Ocean. The train never made it. It was suddenly hit by this massive wall of water - that killer tsunami, you remember, that devastated so much of South Asia. The force of the waves tore the wheels off of some cars and leveled the train in this grove of palm trees. In one of those countless heart-wrenching scenes that came out of the tsunami aftermath, one young man at the train site wept in the arms of his friends as the body of his girlfriend was buried. He spoke out to this sweetheart who had died on that train: "We met in university. Is this the fate we hoped for?" Then, as he began to sob even more, he said, "My darling, you were the only hope for me."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "One 'Unloseable' Hope."
It's hard to think of a more devastating feeling than losing what you had put all your hopes in. Maybe that's a feeling you know if you've lost your health, the love of your life, your job, your retirement, an anchor person in your life, the thing you've invested so much in, the thing - or the person - that's been the glue sort of holding your life together. I have friends who have been told by their marriage partner of decades, "I don't love you anymore." When I asked one of those friends how he's doing, he just said, "I'm crushed."
So many of us have either lost, or will lose, someone or something that we had put a lot of our hopes in. Hope is snatched away by death, divorce, desertion, disease, disaster. Suddenly, our life is thrown into confusion and anxiety, even despair. What we need is something to put our hope in that's "unloseable" - something that can't be touched by death or disease, or divorce, or disaster; something that will never desert us. Actually, someone who will never desert us. Surprisingly, many people have discovered that in losing the source of their hope, they finally found the one hope they could never lose. It could happen to you.
That hope is spelled out beautifully in Psalm 62, beginning with verse 1, our word for today from the Word of God. "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress; I will never be shaken...Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him." The only life-anchor, the only life-hope you can never lose is a personal love relationship with God. God alone. Not a religion, but a relationship. It's possible to have a lot of religion and you totally miss the relationship with God that you were made for. Any hope we get from anyone or anything on earth is just an unsatisfying substitute for belonging to God. When you belong to Him and you know you do, your soul finally can, as the psalmist said, "rest." But until you belonging to God, your soul is rest-less.
That unloseable relationship with God comes only one way, because we're away from the God we need so much; away by our choice, not His. We've repeatedly chosen our way instead of His way and we've built an eternal wall between us and God. A wall that God Himself acted to tear down by sending His only Son, Jesus Christ, to pay for all our sins when He died on the cross. That is how much He loves you. That's how much He wants you. But you've got to want Him bad enough to say, "I'm sorry for my sin, God. I don't want it to be this way anymore. I'm putting all my hope and all my trust in Your Son who gave His life so I could belong to You."
If that's what you want, why don't you tell Him that today. And I'd love to have you get more information and more of what the Bible has to say about being sure you have this relationship by just getting to our website. That's really what it's there for. Just go to YoursForLife.net. And I think you'll find there what many others have found - the assurance that you actually belong to Jesus Christ.
The hope you've lost and the emptiness you feel could actually lead you today to the hope that you will never lose. Hope has a name. His name is Jesus.